I'm a San Francisco-based Assistant Managing Editor with a focus on wealth. I edit mostly, but also write about how the richest get wealthy and how they spend their time and their money. My colleague Luisa Kroll at Forbes in New York and I oversee the massive reporting effort that goes into Forbes' annual World's Billionaires List and the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list. The former gets me to use my rusty Spanish and Portuguese. In 2014, I won an Overseas Press Club award for an article I wrote about Saudi Arabian billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal; I also won a Gerald Loeb Award with co-author Rafael Marques de Morais for an article we wrote about Isabel dos Santos, the eldest daughter of Angola's President. Over 20 years my Forbes reporting has taken me to 17 countries on four continents, from the slums of Manila to palaces in Saudi Arabia and Mexico's presidential residence. Follow me on Twitter @KerryDolan My email: kdolan[at]forbes[dot] com Tips and story ideas welcome.

The World's Richest Man On Fixing The Global Economy

Amid the threat of a Greek debt default and a recession in Europe, Carlos Slim Helú has some words of advice for political leaders: You’re doing it wrong. Slim, a Mexican entrepreneur who built a $69 billion fortune over nearly five decades, thinks governments should stop trying to shrink budget deficits by shortchanging education. “I am very concerned about the world in general. I think the solutions that [political leaders] are looking at are not the right solutions,” he says. “They are not looking for a ­different way to solve the problem.”

The world’s richest person, it turns out, has time these days to ponder weightier issues than where he should invest next. Since 2004 Slim, who recently turned 72, has stepped down from the boards of three of his largest companies. He wants nothing more than to tell me, when we meet at his Mexico City office in late January, how he would solve the challenges facing Europe, the U.S. and ­Mexico. He likes to talk and likes to revisit his roots. We are sitting in heavy wooden chairs against the wall of books in his office when he gets up to grab a notebook he kept when he was 17. In it he had recorded his pay, 200 pesos a week, for working at his family’s company. Another entry noted that his mother had lent him 5,000 pesos to buy stocks.

Slim’s business empire is dominated by telecommunications but also includes finance, mining, real estate, infrastructure, retailing and heavy industry. His biggest success by far began with the $1.76 billion privatization of state-owned phone company Telmex in late 1990, led by his ­industrial conglomerate, Grupo Carso, alongside France Telecom and Southwestern Bell (now AT&T). Last year Telmex became part of América Móvil, a much expanded version of Telmex’s onetime cellular arm. Slim’s 43% stake in the pan-Latin American company clocks in at nearly $39 billion—more than half of his current net worth.

Given this history, it’s not surprising that privatization of state-owned assets is Slim’s first suggestion for struggling ­European economies. “Let’s talk about Spain. It has a lot of highways, and they are all free,” he says. “They should charge users and sell [the highways] to the private sector.” The government can use the money from selling the highways to avoid making big cuts in social programs, Slim advises.

Unemployment must also be addressed, he says. “The problem is that people have no jobs and no hope.” When I suggest that creating jobs takes time, he disagrees. “Some investments create a lot of jobs and other ­investments don’t.” His counsel: Invest in small and medium-size ­businesses, the engines of job creation, in labor-intensive industries such as tourism, health care, education and entertainment.

Turning to the U.S., Slim sees a pressing need for better regulation of the banking system, including the requirement that risky derivatives be carried on financial institutions’ books. He reminds me that he founded his financial group, Inbursa, as a brokerage in 1965. It has since expanded to include a bank and an insurance company, and sports a market capitalization of $14 billion. “We’ve had growth for 47 years. We have never lost money, even in the worst times of our country,” he boasts, noting that Inbursa never needed the government’s help. “We don’t look for size. We look for quality.” Take that, Citigroup.

Slim has put his sons, Carlos, Marco Antonio and Patrick, in charge of the industrial, finance and telecom companies he acquired or started. But he’s clearly still engaged. His son-in-law Arturo Elías Ayub, who directs strategic alliances, communications and institutional relations at Telmex but essentially serves as one of Slim’s right-hand men, tells me: “He decides what companies to buy, and I go and buy them.”

What’s next for the Slim conglomerate? For starters, more investment in his mining business, Minera Frisco, a company created in early 2011 when Slim spun off mining assets owned by Grupo Carso into its own Mexican-stock-exchange-traded entity. The decision was a smart one. Buoyed by high prices for precious metals, the market capitalization of Minera Frisco has soared to a recent $11.7 billion, 25% greater than that of its former parent, Grupo Carso.

“This company used to be medium-size, but it has the opportunity to grow and become a great mining company,” says Slim. Some would argue that Frisco is still medium-size—revenue for 2011 was $665 million. Investors are clearly expecting enormous growth.

As for telecom, América Móvil will invest around $9 billion annually over the next four years, improving its mobile and fixed-line networks throughout Latin America so it can transmit data more quickly. “We are going for faster speed,” says Slim. One area of focus, he adds, is connecting small and medium-size businesses to the Internet.

In Mexico many consider Slim a telecom monopolist because his companies have roughly 70% of the wireless market and an 80% share of landlines. Critics blame him for excessive prices, and a report released by the OECD in late January (after our interview) stated that the lack of competition in Mexico in telecommunications has led to high prices for consumers and businesses and has cost the Mexican economy $25 billion a year. Slim vehemently disagrees.

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For your Information Mexico is the 11 th economy of the world actually Mexico city where he lives now is the 4 th city economy in the American Continent I mean Mexico city moves more money than cities such as Houston and many others, just NewYork , LA and Chicago have bigger economys than Mexico city the rest of the cities in the USA have a smaller Groos national product than Mx Cty look. in economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City#Economy

Well I beleive that every country including the USA has some pleaces that are unsecure for xample Washington the murder rate is very high as well as many parts of the Detroit Metropolitan area have higher murder rates thn Mexico city for example. Do you know Peter Greenberg ? well he said once that there are more chances that you get robbed or murdered in the touristic city of Miami than in Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta or Cancun

How about fixing the country of Mexico social and economic woes before telling the rest of the world what to do. Hey, and, also how about distributing some of your money to the people of Mexico in dire need to keep them in their own country; maybe with some jobs?????

If you read the whole article, you’ll see that Slim is working on both of those areas: trying to improve health and education within Mexico, and supportive of efforts that create new jobs. The one corporate board he still sits on, IDEAL, does infrastructure work, which he says is good for job creation. Of course, one man, even one very wealthy man, cannot solve all the problems of one country.

“Hey, and, also how about distributing some of your money to the people of Mexico”

Lets say he contributed 30 billion dollars (about 1/2 his net worth) to the poorest 10% of Mexico, and lets pretend this could easily be administered and distributed without fraud and corruption from the cartels. That’s less than 2500 a recipient. That would be helpful for a few months, but it wouldn’t solve any problems.

It doesn’t make sense to get mad at someone for offering unsolicited advice when your doing the exact same thing to the person your accusing of doing so. Don’t you think he would love to see Mexico at its best?

I find this article very interesting, I have read some about Carlos Slim and I have witnessed how some of his company scholarships helped a cousin some 17 years ago when the conglomerate was not even close to what is today. Of course many people will argue that he could do more, of course open more to competition, give more money to charity and things like that, but let me mention my point of view about Mr Slim. I have lived and work as a Process and IT Consultant in several countries such as Germany, Poland, Croatia, Chec Republic , USA and of course Mexico where I am from and where I currently live and in my opinion the changes that are happening today in Mexico are so fast and so profound that I would never expected some 10 yeasr ago, for example many people argue that Telmex and America Movil have complete control of the market but to that I would say that I do not agree with that because every one has the liberty to change to any of the companies that are in the market, such as the giant Spanish company Movistar (Telefónica) which is cheaper than América Movil, actually I have one, but there are other companies such as Iusacell, Nextel, MaxCom cel, Unefon(also very cheap) and in fixed lines there are plenty of companies like Cablevisión, Max Com, Mega Cable, of course Telmex, Bestel, Axtel, you can search if you do not believe me. Grupo Carso owns a commercial branch that manage brands like Sears and Roubuck of Mexico, Saks Fifth Avenue and Sanborns in this last, you can see that in these not so big Restaurants and stores, you will find more people working there than needed, and I remember an article about that saying that his success in this business is about service and giving opportunity to people, so in that sense I actually believe that by giving work to hundreds of thousands of people all over Mexico and Latin America he is doing more than just charity I believe. In the last years the Slim Conglomerate has expanded to all kinds of Industries like mining and infrastructure expanding employment opportunity for Mexicans , and also for example in education his foundation has helped over 165,000 to get into the university in Mexico, he has helped and financed the surgery of over 800,00 people in Mexico. Recently he opened the Soumaya Museum with an investment close to the Billion dollars it is a magnificent museum, many say it is one of the best art museums in the world, it is very interesting to go and see several pieces from the best European authors such as Picasso, Rodin and Van Gogh , the entrance is free and thousands and thousands of people from all over the world come here to Mexico city to visit the museum , regardless of the fact that the entrance and all expenses of maintaining the museum are paid by them the thing is that during 2011 over 6 million foreign tourists from other countries visited Mexico city and many of them visited the museum, this is leaving the Tourist industry a lot of money and opportunities to maintain growth and keep opening new jobs for example